


Step in the Right Direction

by Estirose



Category: Starman (TV)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2008-12-18
Updated: 2008-12-18
Packaged: 2018-01-25 08:34:29
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,134
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1641734
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Estirose/pseuds/Estirose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two people meet over a game of chess.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Step in the Right Direction

**Author's Note:**

> Thanks to my beta reader, tptigger.
> 
> Written for jadelennox

 

 

"Your turn," Ben Wylie said, hitting the timer and looking at the player across from him.

Scott Hayden stared at the pieces for a minute before deciding which to move, and then hitting the timer. "I can't believe that you're still in Washington."

"I'm a career bureaucrat," Ben Wylie said, examining his own side now. "Second generation." He smiled, moving a piece. "I just had to find where I belonged - which turned out not to be the FSA." Hitting the timer on his end, he turned to the young man. "Still have friends there, but I'm happy to be where I am."

"I wouldn't mind if it suddenly stopped existing." Scott's bitterness was obvious, even years and years after they'd stopped chasing him. Ben couldn't blame him; that had been genuine stupidity.

"FSA does a lot of good stuff," Ben said, defending his former agency. "Don't blame it for everything George Fox did. I mean, I have to admit that some of the stuff they let him do was really dumb." And he was dumber for sticking around, but there was nothing he could do about that. Everybody had some stupid career moves and stupid bosses. Some people had careers full of stupid bosses.

Ben Wylie was fortunate that he didn't have a whole career like that. That he'd managed to get out of there before the damage had been done. He didn't want to be known as George Fox's assistant, when George Fox tended to be the laughingstock of Washington.

He moved and hit the timer, letting Scott have his move.

"It doesn't feel like it to me," Scott said. Ben supposed that the name probably gave Scott nightmares. That he'd been part of those nightmares?

Well, if he hadn't felt sorry about it, they wouldn't be sitting across the table from one another, playing chess as if they were two old friends. 

Scott made his move. Ben had to wonder how Scott thought about things, if there were things in his brain that made him think differently from humans. That the... biochemistry... was different for him. But he had no desire to pull the man apart to find out. Besides, he was no scientist, just a mid-level bureaucrat that knew how to use a word processor and the smarts to keep his job.

It could have been so much worse, he could have ruined more lives than Scott's. And at least he'd done his best, in the end, to try to help him out. Ben Wylie had gone into government service because his father had always told him how good it was, how it helped the people of the United States and all over the world.

But none of that helped the man before him, he mused as he contemplated his move. Nothing would undo the mistakes that he'd made. Everybody made mistakes in their career, after all, and his was to end up going cross-country with George Fox, trying to make it through the days when it seemed he did nothing but travel.

He'd missed his family when he'd been gone so often. He'd missed a good year of his niece and nephew growing up, of all those things that had happened in their lives. It was a common complaint of those who travelled, especially back then when they hadn't had webcams and email. He remembered one rainy night, somewhere in California, calling his niece on her birthday and trying to sound jolly when all he wanted to do was crawl into bed after a particularly unsuccessful attempt to capture Scott and his father.

The quiet was getting to him as he made his move and hit the timer. "You know, you wouldn't be sitting across from me if you were still thinking that." 

"I came here because I needed to do something." The tone was still sharp, an echo of the teenager who had spent so much time glaring whenever they captured him.

Not that Ben blamed him. "To talk, or to glare at me?" Ben asked, folding his hands. "Or to play chess?"

He watched as Scott studied the chess board. "I... don't know." 

"It probably took a lot of courage to come here," Ben said sagely. To his knowledge, Scott avoided dealing with anything Federal unless he had to. Of course, he didn't know much. The whole thing had been arranged through a couple of people who knew a couple of people, and frankly, he didn't blame Scott for being reluctant to seek him out at all. He had no clue as to why Scott was in Washington, but he wasn't about to complain. It gave him a chance to exorcise some of his own ghosts.

But Scott was silent on that. "I haven't kept up with you," Ben said. "I don't know what's happened with your life, or why you chose to meet up with me here. George was the obsessed one."

He had been the obsessed one, really. Ben hadn't really cared as long as he got a paycheck and good reviews at that point, he was ashamed to say. Anything to get out of there and away from George Fox.

Scott made his move and hit the timer. "I had to," he said finally. But he didn't offer Ben any more insight. It was like the chess game they were playing: one tried to figure out the other's strategy, what the other was thinking, what the other was doing.

In some ways, their brief acquantance in the 1980s had been that way. A chess game between George Fox and Scott's father, with him and Scott on the chessboard.

"You don't have to explain to me," he said, thinking of how hard it was to deal with Scott back then. "At all. I don't want to know."

"Isn't that what the government wants?" Scott asked, frowning over the chessboard, "To know everything?"

"Maybe," Ben said, "But that's not what I want. I want to play chess. Maybe let you see that George Fox isn't the end-all and be-all of Washington. I wouldn't be here otherwise, and neither would you."

Maybe the ghosts wouldn't be exorcised that day. Maybe that wasn't what Scott wanted. But at least he was willing to come, and play chess. And talk to Ben, who he had no reason to like and even less reason to seek out.

But maybe Scott was different now. He was. Or at least he thought that he was. He wanted to be better than George Fox, to care, to be part of the government that helped people.

And if someday he could help Scott, that would be good too. But in the meantime, all he could do was play chess and hope that the young man opened up.

It was a step in the right direction. 

 


End file.
